Charlotte and A-Town were just a taste of what the American South has to offer: in this chapter of his road trip chronicle, Dave shares an optimistic outlook from New Orleans and Austin. Keep up-to-date with all of the adventures on Route 77 by following @DaveSeliger on Twitter!
Day 8: New Orleans, LA
In just two years, the work of creative studio Civic Center has become synonymous with grassroots urban revitalization in cities like New Orleans and Detroit. A visit to their studio was at the top of my list for my road trip plans, and I relished the opportunity to sit down with studio founders Candy Chang and James Reeves, as well as newcomer Olly Blank, to chat about Civic Center’s history, philosophy and projects.
The Civic Center crew
Surprisingly, Civic Center actually began as a record label in New York before moving to Helsinki and eventually settling in New Orleans in 2010. Chang studied architecture, then graphic design, soon realizing that “design is pretty powerful and can get people’s attention.” But what for? Chang’s answer came during a collaboration with the Center for Urban Pedagogy in New York City. The goal of Street Vendor Guide project was to allow the population of vendors in the city, who normally have little interaction, to connect and “share stories.” Design could be used to facilitate the flow of information.
This experience led Chang to “focus on cities, but ignore the disciplines around it.” Conversation centered around urban design in one’s city can often be inaccessible because “design is cloaked in academic terms,” although “at the end of the day, we’re talking about very basic language.” In recent years, there has been a dramatic shift out of the suburbs and back towards the urban centers of America. “People are starting to return to cities,” said Reeves, both physically and psychologically.
A page from the Street Vendor Guide
A potential challenge is motivating all the members of a community to partake in the necessary conversations about their neighborhoods and lives. “People are lined up for Black Friday at 4:30am,” said Reeves, “but how do you get people to line up to talk about their child’s school?” A history of ineffective government can destroy citizens’ faith in the systems behind education, housing and law enforcement. This fate is all too real for the good people of New Orleans, who are still recovering from Hurricane Katrina seven years later.
Yet the “most interesting things are happening where the government has been neglectful,” described Reeves. Black market or unlicensed businesses emerge in the sidewalk cracks of the city, not by criminals, but by the common person “out of necessity.” Civic Center helps to bolster this movement by providing the “tools and tactics to bypass the government.” Reeves and Blank wondered aloud if this approach to government—or rather the lack-thereof—made Civic Center a political organization, but eventually decided that politics are besides the point when a government fails its citizens. “We want to see the government get involved in the conversation,” said Reeves, “but it’s not happening.”
A poster hanging inside Civic Center
One theme about design in America I’ve encountered over the course of my travels has been about connectivity via the Internet. However, in New Orleans, where less than half of the residents have access to the Internet, connectivity within communities needs to be rethought. “People feel if they retweet something, they’re making a difference,” said Reeves. This desktop do-gooder mentality is only compounded by New Orleanians’ aversion to outsiders and, well, maybe the Internet is not the answer to all problems of creating connections. In many ways, Civic Center is truly a return to analog forms of communication. Similar to her experiences with street vendors, Chang wants to leverage the knowledge in a community. “You don’t bump into every neighbor,” said Chang. “Potential wisdom doesn’t get passed on.”
Civic Center’s house-cum-storefront-cum-studio
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